Dead like a Phoenix
by BlackBird666
Summary: Draco Malfoy is a broken man after the war, too terrified of humanity to leave his home. Harry Potter is embarking on a dangerous new career that leads him both degrade and aid Draco. HPDM, some other pairings.
1. A Background

Dead like a Phoenix

So the first line of this just came to me. The first chapter is a little weird and its not at all how the rest of the story will be, it's more of a prologue. The OCs are not really important so much as they are used to illustrate parts of Draco's character. This will contain mentions of past abuse, both physical and sexual and probably some Drarry going on a bit later.

"The stroke of the tongue breaketh the bones. Many have fallen by the edge of the sword; but not so many as have fallen by the tongue."  
>Ecclesiasticus (ch. XXVIII, v. 17)<p>

*/*/*/

_How do you describe the ruination of a life? How do you put misery into clever, simple little words? How do you say that in the desolation there was growth, like a flower rising from the ashes of a scorched forest..._

_*/*/*_

Draco Malfoy's house was an odd sort of place. There was a Mermaid lingering the fountain, a vampire living in his basement, and three veela who he was distantly related too inhabiting the left wing of the manor. There also may or may not be a Djinn, the Veela were quite hysterical over it anyway.

He didn't know why he allowed the vampire to stay. After his mother died, she had been the first 'friend' he had cultivated.

He had been sitting in his mother's rose garden, though it was more than a rose wilderness now with weeds growing as thickly as flowers, reading by _lumos_ light.

_The mitochondrion is found in __most eukaryotic cells and creates energy for cell by generating adenosine triphosphate. Mitochondria are also involved in many other cell... _

Draco sighed, cell biology was perhaps the most boring subject he ever had the misfortune of finding interesting. He glanced up, the moon was nearly full.

_Almost time_, he thought idly, gaze flicking back to his book. And then up again, because there was a shape in the corner of his eye that had not been there before. It was a woman, for a moment he thought a ghost, but no, she was pale, but not translucent.

"Salve," (hello) she waved with a smile. The first voice he had heard in three years.

He waved back, and asked with his hands if she spoke sign. It would take about a week for the question of how she got past his wards to occur to him.

"Surdus es?" (Are you deaf?)She raised her brows. Stooping into the ruined garden she plucked a up a rose on a long, thorny stem.

He shook his head and pointed to his neck, or rather the hole under his chin. Even now, it still made every breath feel like sand paper being shoved down his trachea. He couldn't even remember getting it; he couldn't remember most of what happened to him in the Camps.

"Ruit iugulum?" (Your throat is ruined?) she asked, chewing the rose in her thick, pointed teeth, heedless of the thorns. Her Latin sounded forced and her words were strung together awkwardly and choppily. "Tu istum roges me intus?" (Are you going to ask me in?)

He rolled his eyes and tapped two fingers in a striking motion on his neck. Draco stood and moved to go inside the cold leached into his bones far faster than it had before.

"Scio me Lamiam. Non bibam sanguinem tuum mihi opus mansit in cellam quod oriente sole." (I know I am a vampire. I will not drink your blood, I need to spend the night in your cellar because the sun is rising.) She had made it to the blossom now, and licked the dew from the pink petals with a colourless tongue.

He tapped his brow and pursed his lips, as if to say, _I'm not stupid_.

"Iuramentum: Si occidero nulla humana in domo vestra." She tore the pink petals away, placing them on her long tongue one at a time, "Lamiam promissio non potest solvi, nosti."(My oath. I will not kill any human in your house. Vampire promises cannot be broken, you know.)

He opened the glass sliding door that led into the house from the garden and motioned her inside. He didn't know what made him do it, it was stupid, he knew that, but he did it anyway.

She was beautiful, but it was the beauty of a wild animal. One who was hunted, and starved to emancipation but still kept its shoulders proud and high, teeth bared. Inside the house her skin remained the same ghostly shade, strawberry hair shimmering in the soft candle light. Her eyes were blue jewels so luminous they hardly looked real and her jaw had taken on the snakish, triangular shape that afflicted aged vampires. She smelled more animal than human, which he found oddly comforting.

"Gratias, Draco Malfoy." (Thank you)She bowed her head, "Dormiam nunc."( I will sleep now)

She smiled with rotten vampire teeth, and headed towards the dungeons.

Draco managed to make a noise, and when she turned, he mimed a bed.

"No, gratias, puella. Utor nomine Lux." She closed her blue lips and winked, wandering off downstairs as if she had always been there. (No, thank you, sweetheart. I use the name of Light.)

_Light?_ He frowned; _she may as well name herself death_.

Draco never asked what she ate, or rather who, in fact they had almost no communication, though she would often sit in his work room for hours on end. In response to his raised eye brow, she had simply shrugged and explained that she liked the sound of a heartbeat, after years of silence.

It creeped him out a little, and she absolutely terrified his veelas. There were three of them, a female and two males. They were even more of a mystery than, merely showing up one day, spouting nonsense about a debt his father owed them in a thick Icelandic accent. After his death, apparently the debt had fallen to him.

They appeared more human than Lux, but that did not bother him, for once. He supposed it was the smell; it was sweet and cloying not at all like the _cheese/earth/fish _smell that seemed to surround humanity.

The first night the veela arrived, they were sitting at the dinner table with Draco when the vampire slunk into room. Her head cocked to the side, she hissed, white tongue lapping blue lips.

The female, Vanna, extended her wings with a high pitched screech. Her chair was thrown backwards, and the brothers stood just as suddenly, though they had no wings to reveal.

"Salve," Lux whispered, eyes blue embers.

"Vampire!" it was one of the males, Fannar.

Draco sighed and held up a hand. Of course, the veela didn't know how to sign either, so he relied primarily on hand gestures to try to indicate the vampire's harmlessness. Though he realized her exact words had been _Si occidero nulla humana in domo vestra_, so she could pretty much drain the Veelas without breaking her word. She could probably kill him too, if you wanted to be literal.

Mediating disputes between different species who did not speak the same language, while being mute yourself was an exercise in a kind of patience Draco did not know he possessed.

But, Draco Malfoy supposed, it was worth it; Werewolves were social creatures after all.


	2. A Forced Begining

I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it.

- Maya Angelou

*/*/*/*/

_...At first, I considered it a sort of death. My life in society was ended, my family was ruined, I was a Death Eater no longer. I remember screaming, crying out in frustration as the train that once borne me to the best part of my life now carried me to the worst. And then I remember the screaming stopped, and there were only gurgles... _

Draco Malfoy unfolded his Sunday _Prophet_ and promptly sprayed coffee all over it in shock.

In great, bold, taunting print the front page read:

**Controversial Werewolf registry bill passes**

_After last weekend's gruesome attack that left a young woman in hospital, the Wizengamot has passed law that requires all werewolves to register with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures... All werewolves will be required to state their address, inform the ministry of travel plans, marriage, reproduction, how long they have been afflicted... subject to random searches... required to take wolf's bane at every full moon, regardless of the conditions severity... failure to register or abide with the law will result in immediate incarceration for an undetermined amount of time. _

He supposed he would have to do it, register anyway. It was too dangerous not to. He didn't like Azkaban, though he'd only been there once to visit his father in sixth year. It would, however, mean venturing into London and speaking to human beings for the first time in three years. He hadn't even left the Manor grounds since his release from the Camps.

He wondered briefly if they had anyone who could interpret sign language. He was going to go with no.

He wondered if the Wizarding World had forgotten about him, if he had managed to slip people's minds as readily as they had slipped his. He hadn't thought about Crabbe or Goyle, about Blaise, Theo or Pansy in the longest time. He supposed Theo and Pansy must have been married by now.

He thought about Potter sometimes, but rarely about his sickening little sidekicks. How different would his life have been if Potter had taken his hand?

Draco laughed inwardly, as his actual laugh was quite frightening. He knew exactly how his life would be. He would still be proud of the mark on his arm, still be a slave to the Death Eaters, because there was no way in hell Potter would have been able to kill the Dark Lord, or maybe he would not even have tried.

Draco had that effect on people, making them darker, worse than they actually were. When he met Crabbe and Goyle they had been oafs, but gentle, harmless oafs. Pansy had been a sweet girl until Lucius started bringing her around for play dates. So had Blaise. Sweet that was, not a girl. He diminished humans, he stole their light, and that's why he couldn't stand to be around them.

He would have twisted Potter, manipulated and used him like the tool he was. And in the end, when he was worn and damaged with the use, when the gloss of fame had faded, and Draco no longer had a use for him, he would be cast away.

Draco Malfoy's stomach turned, he was just like his father. Had he really been such a terrible human being?

Thank gods he wasn't one anymore.

787878

/*/*/

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."

- Anais Nin

*/*/*/

_...I felt like a tourist in my own mind. Every memory, every experience was laid bare and I spent days watching them flit past. Reliving the life I'd never cared to take notice of, finally allowing the joy, the pain and the unspeakable sorrow of it to break my heart..._

_*/*/*/_

Draco Malfoy was eating breakfast with his Veela, contemplating his impending trip to the ministry.

"You are sure?" Ari asked around a sip of orange juice. He never used conjunctions, something Draco never failed to notice and be annoyed by.

Draco nodded an affirmative, he did not need an escort, he could do this. Maybe. And he just failed to use a conjunction, fucking _Veela_.

"Well, my darling," Vanna spoke languidly. "Fate is a fickle cunt, isn't she."

"How so?" Fannar said through a mouthful of melon.

"Well, think about it," she shrugged, "poor little thing can't even speak, how's he supposed to protect himself in the loud world of humanity? He was a word smith once, now he can't even shape a single turn of phrase. He's all broken from a war not of his own making and terrified of humans, though really they should fear him. A little ball of blond irony. Perhaps one of us should go with him."

The blond man let his head fall into long, scared hands, silently contemplating the plate that rested between his elbows. He had managed to eat a piece of toast today, with honey and a bit of jam. Ever since he had been bitten, eating had become somewhat of a hassle.

"Neither of you is going with him," Ari announced and stood up. "We are not even supposed to be in the country."

_Great, illegal Veelas_. Draco rolled his eyes but still didn't look up. It wasn't as if they were really thinking of him, they were too selfish for that. They were trying to gain his favour over the other two; he had seen them do it before. They valued him as a possession, as a status symbol above the other members of the household. And Draco was perfectly cool with that, because he got a lot of excellent food and useful gifts from the exchanges.

He stood suddenly and waved a farewell.

"Good luck," Vanna called as he strode briskly from the room.

Luck had absolutely nothing to do with this. Today was going to be a cluster fuck.

Draco took one last look at himself in the mirror before departing into the fire. Mirror Draco looked gaunt and a little tired, but at least he was clean shaven. He had debated cutting his waist length locks, but he didn't trust a Veela to do it and it hurt too much for him to try. He was dressed as simply, but every bit as luxuriously as his father had, he wanted to project the image of wealth and power, even though he had neither. On his finger was his father's ring and around his neck a pendant Lux had given him. It was a tiny azure eye on a thin gold chain that she bought in 'Byzantium' when 'she was a child'.

Releasing a slow breath, Draco pulled his normally handsome features into a long forgotten mask that had been resting upon his mental shelf for nearly three years.

He was going to see human beings; he needed to look the heartbreakingly cruel part. It would be his first time off the manor grounds in three years and his first encounter with humanity in as long.

_Well_, Draco stared at the floo powder in his hand, _what do I do now?_

Sighing, he threw the powder in the fire and stepped through, _praying_ thought would be enough to transport him right.

When he opened his eyes, there he was, standing in the reception area of the ministry. It was _loud_. The sounds of people moving, of them talking and gossiping, rustling papers, humming and whistling. Tremors wracked Draco's thin frame, and his fists were clenched in his pockets.

It was very bright, too. They had added a great many windows since Draco had been here for Lucius' sentencing. It smelled different, his superhuman nose picked up the scents of contentment and of food cooking, somewhere in the distance.

A man, who was walking at top speed, knocked against Draco and in his weakened state, nearly sent him sprawling.

"Watch it!" he snapped viciously.

He didn't—couldn't—say a word in defence but he moved quickly away. There were signs in green parchment that directed his kind towards the special 'Werewolf Registry Centre'. A very loud part of Draco was screaming that he shouldn't have come, that he should have remained at home with his monsters.

The farther he walked, consciously avoiding contact with all the humans walking the corridors with him, the more he began to notice _them_. There were some among them who looked scruffy, and following the same route as him, Draco supposed they were Werewolves, too. They certainly smelled different than the other humans.

He tried not to look at them, or indeed look at anyone, keeping his eyes trained on the floor and attempting to control the shivers that wiggled their way from his spine down through his chest and abdomen.

The one time he did glance up, his heart nearly stopped. Granger and Weasley passed to the right of him without even a glance. They were holding hands.

_Millicent said they were dating_. He thought briefly and then returned his focus to following the signs.

The other Werewolves, he was quite sure they were Werewolves now, were slowly growing closer together, a packing instinct Draco remembered reading about. They walked with a confident swagger, positively oozing toughness, exactly the kind of alpha male he used to fantasize about when he was younger. They shot him as many glances as he did them, none of which was welcoming. Draco felt the urge to snarl, but quashed it. It would look silly, his face all twisted up like that and no sound coming out.

And then they reached their destination, a door made of metal and glass. Inside a number of other frightening strangers sat in cushioned chairs. They looked uncomfortable.

Draco didn't bother to square his shoulders; he just took a number and drifted like snowflake to chair in the corner. There was a man in the chair to his left and across from him a young woman. His number was 37.

_So this was it_, Draco marvelled, _my epic return to humanity. _He had felt a few stares on the walk here, but less than he expected.

The man next to him drew a single cigarette from inside his shirt but didn't light it. He looked faded and worn though he couldn't have been more than thirty-five, maybe forty. His clothes were frayed, but not dirty and like most of the others he had an aura of _danger _about him.

Draco wondered if he had such an aura.

"Hey," it was the man next to him, "you're Malfoy's kid, aren't you."

He nodded.

"What, too good to talk to Weres are we?" there was anger in his tone.

The blond rolled his eyes and tilted his head back, pointing emphatically at the scar there.

"Oh," the man said, "you get that in the camps?"

He shook his head, staring at his scarred digits.

"Number 16!" a woman at the reception desk called. The man glanced down at his number and then stood.

"That's me," he smiled. Draco didn't, keeping his face neutral until the man was completely gone from view.

"Number 17!"

Draco Malfoy sighed, this could take a while.


	3. An Interlude

So this is a weird interlude I created to try to explain Draco further. Oh, an please review! I want to know if it's too horrible to continue.

"_I dream'd a dream tonight._

_And so did I._

_Well, what was yours?_

_That dreamers often lie."_

_Romeo and Juliet:_ I:VI: 52-55

Draco Malfoy never consciously chose to be alone. Like everything else in his life, he sort of fell into it.

He knew he needed a job, his mother had left him exactly nothing after her suicide, so he had put an ad in a few select papers unobtrusively advertising his brewing skills. Then, he'd gone to his father's laboratory to take stock of the ingredients that the ministry had deemed 'safe' upon their initial search of the manor nearly two months prior.

He began to alphabetize the lower shelf, it was busy work but perhaps that was what he needed. The upper shelf held more of challenge.

Draco took a deep breath and _reached_ for a vial of distilled Wolf's Bane. No matter how hard he pushed, how many tears escaped his eyes and how tall he stood on his tip toes, he could not grab it.

The sad thing was, the vial rested just two, maybe three inches above his forehead. Personally, he was glad he could still brush his hair, even if it was a bit of a struggle.

He strained for a second more, and in a fit of frustrated rage, grabbed a bottle labelled Essence of Cat Milk and whipping it at the floor. It was a pitiful effort; the glass seemed to shatter without any real feeling, as if an ounce less force would have failed to even crack it. A low sob crawled up his throat and burst forth a coughing mess. With an annoyed wand flick he banished the ruined ingredient.

Taking a slow, deep breath Draco calmed himself as best he could, and cast a wordless levitation spell, slowly and carefully lowered the vial onto the table.

It took hours, and every drop of his miniscule patience. He took breaks, put his fist through the wall more than once and nearly ripped out every hair on his head, but eventually it was finished. He had never done anything like it, never done anything that required so much concentration, so much time, and had such a tiny reward.

His first order came later that week. It took him two tries to get the potion right. Not because it was difficult, but because he was having major problems training his muscles to stir again. He wasn't so fast when it came to adding ingredients, and he found his eyesight was somewhat worse than it had been in school, so it was difficult to read the old book.

Fearful of his body's rebellion, Draco did research in his family library and discovered a method of stretching called _yoga_. He was awful at it, and couldn't do most of the positions, but he could feel his muscles beginning to loosen.

Draco Malfoy could stir a caldron properly after two months, though second shelf would elude him for the rest of his life.

Once his body had been taken care of, Draco's thoughts turned invariably to his past, to who he once was:

_He was Draco _fucking_ Malfoy. He was the top of his class, the ruthless death eater, the god among insects. He was rich, his blood pure, his future was a path set before him, all he had to do was walk it. His demeanour was calm, his mind was cruel and his tongue cutting. He was quick with his wand and good with his cock. _

_And then, one day, some infinite time after the battle of Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy looked in the mirror. And a sad, corpse skinned thing looked back at him. It had blond hair like him, but it was knotted and long. There were grey eyes in its face but they looked starved and the black pillows underneath frightened him. And there was crater under its chin, blood on its lips and scars all over its body. _

_And it was him, it was him because he waved and the thing waved back like some sort of terrible puppet. _

_He wasn't going back to Hogwarts, they had strict policy no Death Eater policy. The mark on his arm was no longer one of pride, but of shame and remembered terror that labelled him a social pariah. His fortune was decimated, half of his property had been seized by the ministry, and he had no future. He couldn't even get hard anymore or manage a single snide retort. And his blood, that had been his greatest pride, may as well be as dirty as Grangers with werewolf venom running through it. _

_In that moment Draco Malfoy broke. It was a slow fade of memory boiling to the surface, repressed images of torture, of hands clenching, bound above his head, of blood staining starched sheets and whispers of _Crucio_ like a lover's endearments. He sat on the floor, looking into the mirror with tiny gusts of sound escaping his lips, every now and then. _

_When he was younger, Draco could separate his mind into planes. There was the subconscious, and of course his conscious. In his subconscious, he squirreled away his pain, his fear and all the negative experiences he could manage to cram in. His conscience mind he filled with pride, cunning and cruelty enough to keep the other things from seeping through the cracks in his mental barriers. _

_There was a third plane also, but it only presented its self when Draco was a young boy and his father came to visit him at night. It had become harder and harder for Draco to find as he grew older and Lucius grew bolder. _

_But Draco Malfoy was broken and he was forced to examine those memories which had blocked out, and the feelings he tried to erase. It made him sick, and every time he even thought the word ferret he stopped breathing. _

In this time, a period that lasted around three months, he didn't come to terms with the abuse he'd suffered, and the abuse he'd given in return, but confronted it. For the first time since he was a tiny child, Draco allowed himself to feel emotions other than anger and contempt. It wasn't easy; it was harder than levitating the potions, or fixing the vanishing cabinet, harder even then staying sane in the POW Camp.

He did go a little crazy then; spending hours a day writing, _desperate _to get it out. Some days he wanted to stop and put the cap back on the bottle, to forget all that he had remembered, but he couldn't do it. He didn't know if that meant he was getting weaker or stronger.

He never considered suicide, though sometimes he did cut himself. Small cuts though, most barely breaking the skin.

Slowly his experiences became part of him, and he felt as if, for the first time, he knew himself. He was no longer full of false confidence but allowed his emotions to present honestly, then analyzed them. He didn't like what he saw.

Draco Malfoy, in short, became a new person. Or perhaps, more accurately, the person that had long ago hidden himself in the depths of Draco Malfoy's mind finally managed to escape.

"_Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live."_

- Dorothy Thompson


	4. An Interview

So Harry meets a changed Draco... Review? It makes me sad that I only have like four.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It was hard I suppose, to get on without a cause. What was there now, who was there to fight? I had no reason, no passion, and no burning drive to carry on, no matter the cost to myself. Not even a sense of peace."

Harry Potter had a massive head ache. Werewolves were arguably the most trying of all magical creatures, and because he was still a trainee he got the extra fun job of interviewing them all fucking day long.

He still wasn't comfortable with the werewolf registry, but didn't want to rock the proverbial boat. He hadn't signed up to get political or to do the kind of paper work he was now, but to work in the field, protecting people from creatures like the ones that drifted through his office today.

Ginny had forced him into this career. It would simply be too awkward, after their break up, if they had to spend every day together in Auror Training. So he'd turned to the Department of Magical Creature Control, very few people ever enlisted in the Creature Control program, and of them a tiny portion made it through training. It was arguably the most dangerous job in the wizarding world.

_Except of now,_ Harry thought irritably as his door closed behind yet another seriously pissed off Werewolf.

The little bell on his door rang again and Harry wanted to cry.

Instead, the brunet looked up and nearly bit his tongue off in surprise.

"Malfoy!" he sputtered.

He looked different, not better or worse, just different. His hair was no longer slicked back and proper, but fell down his back in smooth platinum waves. His face still just as thin, and a flicker of a smirk lit his lips, though it looked almost forced.

The biggest change was his eyes. They were still a light grey, but the malice and the fear that had lingered there was replaced by the haunted exhaustion that plagued every other 'client' he had seen that day, and a soft sadness all his own.

The blond man bit his lip, a gesture Harry was sure he wasn't supposed to see and walked to the chair opposite Harry's. From his sleeve he withdrew a slip of paper and what Harry identified to be a Quick Quotes Quill. He set them on the desk between them.

"What's this?" he asked dumbly.

Malfoy rolled his eyes and the Quill spread across the paper writing the words, **a means of communication** in precise calligraphy.

"What you don't even speak to Mud Bloods now?" he asked tiredly.

A shadow of a smile appeared on the other man's lips.

**I cannot speak to anyone, Potter. I have no larynx.**

"Oh," Harry muttered. It was so blunt. "Please fill out this questionnaire as honestly as possible."

Malfoy took it gingerly from Harry's hands, treating him to a view of stiff scarred digits.

He couldn't imagine Draco Malfoy as a Werewolf, it was simply too contrary to his nature. But then, so was the fear that was positively radiating off of him. His back was straight and stiff as ever, but it was not out of arrogance but rather a nervous tension. His arthritic fingers clutched the pen like a lifeline, and his other arm was wrapped around his middle, as if he were trying to support himself.

Malfoy had disappeared off the face of Britain three years ago. Not a word in the papers, or a whisper of gossip in the office had contained his name. Harry had forgotten him, wholly and completely, but now three years of mental silence were made up for in a flurry of questions, questions he dare not ask.

Five minutes later, Draco Malfoy raised his head and the quill began to move once again.

**I do not know who turned me**.

"Just—Just put the date," he muttered.

**I don't know it.**

Harry eyed him sceptically, "you must know."

Malfoy glared, **I don't.**

"Just put what month it was or the year," Harry shrugged.

He bent his head and continued with the survey. When he was finished, he thrust it forward and Harry filed it away in his desk.

"For your safety," Harry began the long speech his boss had made him memorize, "and the safety of others you will be fitted with a tracking bracelet that will remain on when you shift. A Ministry representative will visit your home and inspect the area which you use to transform. You will be required to prove that you have a supply of Wolf's Bane potion and are qualified to administer it to yourself. You will be required to inform the ministry prior to marriage, pregnancy or relocation. Failure to comply with these guidelines will result in incarceration. If your transformation area is deemed unsafe you will be required to report to a Ministry designated area every full moon for your transformation. If the Ministry representative feels other occupants of your home are not safe from you—"

He paused; Malfoy was making a raspy choking noise. It sounded as if someone were strangling a small animal inside of him, and that he was in pain because of it.

It took Harry a moment to realize he was laughing.

"What!" the brunet snapped.

Malfoy took a deep breath and his face twisted in pain. Another two, smaller breaths and his expression was once again neutral, though a tear escaped his left eye.

**Nothing Potter, you may continue.**

"If the Ministry representative feels other occupants of your home are not safe from you, you or they will be relocated at your own expense. Thank you for your continued cooperation." Harry finished with a stern glare, Malfoy was not cowed. "For the record of the Ministry I am required to photography where you were bitten, take a sample of your blood and fit you for a tracking bracelet."

**Very well**.

The blond stood and shrugged off his jacket. His fingers moved to the buttons on his shirt, trembling just slightly.

"Where is it?" Harry stood also and pulled a camera from his desk.

**Torso**

The shirt came off. Malfoy's skin was a field of virgin snow marred by criss-crossing of paths on the solid white expanse. But these trails did not tell the story of a journey, but of long, drawn out abuse. Most seemed clean, precise and unhurried. Caresses of his skin with a blade. Harry recognized a few shiny burns, and the rippling thick scars of the lash. There were a few that he could not place, they looked like tree roots branching out from each other and splitting into smaller and smaller tendrils.

His ribs were visible, like a tiny mountain range that surrounded the valley of his abdomen. A blue pendant fairly shinning with power hung on a dull chain to his xiphoid process.

His hip bones cast long shadows in the harsh, false light. The soft movements of his breathing created yet more across his stomach and Harry found himself watching them grow, then slowly soften and shrink. His skinny hips thinned further still and then abruptly flared at his ribcage in curve that would be feminine if it weren't so sharp. Still, it looked to Harry a perfect place to rest his hands.

The bite was the largest Harry had ever seen, it appeared a wolf had caught him by his left side, so the top of the it covered his stomach and the bottom part of his back.

"Malfoy," the brunet murmured "what they fuck happened to you?"

The blond shook his head with a little smile playing on his lips.

**Lots**

Harry gulped and snapped a photo of the bite mark. "Why didn't you get your throat er—recovered?" the brunet asked with a sick curiosity.

**I was refused medical care. **

"They can do that?" Harry asked, moving closer to the other man. He took another photograph of the bite.

Malfoy turned slowly and Harry watched the interplay of muscles moving under his thin skin. He was so close to him, merely inches away, head bowed, glorious platinum hair spilling over his shoulders, leaving only a few inches of a too-bumpy spine visible between its choppy ends and the waistband of his trousers. His body seemed to jump with ever beat of his heart, though Harry could barely see the movement of his breathing.

Before he realized the movement, Harry reached out and brushed Malfoy's hair away from his bite. Malfoy gasped and a stiffened sharply.

"I'm sorry." Harry drew his hand back. "Can you move your hair?"

Malfoy shook his head mutely, and drew it into a horse-tail with his left hand, body still stiff.

"I'm sorry for having to do this," he murmured. Malfoy's back was agony painted on human flesh.

**Stop apologizing**.

"Here," Harry indicated the chair awkwardly, "sit down so I can draw blood."

Malfoy sat like an old man who had been too long from his wheel chair. He extended a pale limb, and with a jolt Harry recognized the Dark Mark on it. This was a Death Eater, a Death Eater and a werewolf, and he had nearly forgotten. So he shoved his nauseous sympathy into a dark corner of his mind and extracted a needle from his desk.

Very aware of Malfoy's tense flesh, Harry slipped the needle in with hardly a bit of pressure. The vial filled quickly, Werewolve's hearts beat much faster than a human's. Malfoy's sad grey eyes watched him work with an odd sort of detachment, as if it were not his paper skin that was being pierced, not his life blood being drained away.

The blood went into a refrigerated and sterile box after being labelled with Malfoy's name.

Harry the removed a thick silver chain from inside the desk, "hold out your left wrist, please."

The blond's movements were mechanical, but quick. Harry fumbled with the clasp for a second, finger's brushing Malfoy's soft, pale skin. It felt like little sparks jumping under his fingers.

Harry realized he had lingered too long and stepped back rather quickly."Ahh—A Ministry representative will be in contact with you before the next full moon."

Malfoy already had his shirt back on, though he was having trouble with his buttons. Harry suddenly pitied him. The proud Draco Malfoy of old, who laughed with such intense cruelty, whose words were daggers made of air and whose eyes were walls of steel, was dead as last autumn's leaves. No, he had no voice now and his eyes... his eyes were mist, open and absorbing yet still concealing what lay beneath. He was a shadow of his former self, so clearly terrified, so clearly broken, yet so proud.

So _compelling_.

Draco Malfoy exited his office without a backward glance, and for that, Harry was glad. He knew his eyes betrayed him too easily.

Harry Potter sat down rather heavily at his desk, headache very suddenly gone.


	5. An Obvious Epiphany

Loss of freedom seldom happens overnight. Oppression doesn't stand on the doorstep with toothbrush moustache and swastika armband – it creeps up insidiously... step by step, and all of a sudden the unfortunate citizen realizes that it is gone.  
>- Baren Lane<p>

Draco Malfoy heaved the contents of his stomach into an alabaster toilet bowl approximately thirty seconds after entering his Manor. His shoulders shook as another wave of nausea took him, spitting and puking hydrochloric acid out of his body.

His jacket was too warm, so he threw it off. A second later his shirt followed.

"Uhh," he moaned and threw up again, shaking with the force of it. Draco allowed himself to fall back into a sitting position against the wall. The cold of the tiles leached into his too hot body.

His face was wet with tears and his eyes red of them, though only the occasional sob hitched it's way through his torso.

He was fucking _pathetic_. He scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and sniffed loudly.

It was the pent-up fear and anxiety... and the _smell_, the fucking scent of humanity that clung to Potter like cheap cologne, and his lukewarm human touch.

Draco's finger nails dug into his calves, _relax. Please relax_.

"_Relax, Draco! It'll feel much better..."_

_Shut up! Shut up! _His long pale hands shoved themselves into his hair and yanked it nearly from his head. He hated that there was no point in screaming anymore.

"Draco?" luminous eyes watched him from the door way, "Quid actum?" (What happened?)

He shook his head an extended a wrist, a thin silver chain glittered on it.

"Quod non quid te renidet ille." (That's not why you are crying.) She came and sat down next to him. Her scent was the coolness of the woods and it calmed him. Her short, bejewelled fingers traced a scar that curved his shoulder. He scarred easily, most of the marks on his body would have healed seamlessly on others, perhaps he lacked the will or the tenacity necessary to close wounds.

She hissed when she examined the bracelet, "Argentum. Eam non ardet vobis?" (silver. It does not burn you?)

He shook his head.

She pursed her colourless lips, "Affectum transibunt. Crede mihi, spatio transeunt universa."(This feeling will pass. Trust me, given time, all things pass)

He shook his head again. All things do not pass. Some things, important things, linger. His stomach burned, but he was almost certain the nausea had passed. He wiped the tears from his eyes with a careless hand.

"Etiam, etiam,"(Yes, yes) she said irritably, "Recte dico, Draco Malfoy. Sequetur super hoc, et tu in volutabro nolite misereri se."(I am right Draco Malfoy. You will get over this, and you will stop your wallowing in self pity.)

His head snapped up, rage written across his fair features. He pulled a note book and pen from his pocket and scrawled, **SELF PITY?**

"Etiam. Triennium tenetur you've te vinculis domus metu. Sine multo longiore et numquam salvageable. Tempus desistere luctus et tua lingua polluitur sanguine." (Yes. For three years you've bound yourself to this house with chains of fear. Wait much longer, and you will never be salvageable. It is time to stop mourning your tongue and your polluted blood.)

**I'm sorry,** he scratched out, **when last were you beaten? Raped? Starved, hung or tortured? When last did you find your mother's fetid corpse hanging from a ceiling fan? **So rotten and deformed she wasn't his mother, but bag of bones and maggots.

"Numquam esse in sum polluta facile,"(Never in my existence have I been so easily defiled) she fucking sneered, and expression made even more terrible by the thick yellow fangs hovering over her upper lip.

**Easily**, the word was cramped and tiny under his large printed tirade above, **EASILY!** The paper tore under the force of his pen. **I fought, I fucking fought them! I did!**

"Mentiris utrique nostrum."(You're lying to both of us.)

Draco blinked, so he was. What was he supposed to say? That he never made a damn sound, that he just hung like a scarecrow waiting for his life to end? That his cowardliness, and his terror had incapacitated his pride and he was ready to beg, if only he had a voice to do so. That he would have willingly done anything to survive, that he'd never considered valiantly committing suicide, _better to die on your feet than live on your knees_ [with cock in your mouth].

"Quare non Draco? Quare non repugnare?" (Why didn't you Draco? Why didn't you fight back?) Her eyes still glittered hard as jewels, but her mouth had softened its dark expression. He knew she didn't just mean in the Camps, but as a child, as Death Eater, why had he never grown a spine? Why had he taken the Mark? Why had he remained silent when his father came to him? Why had he repaired the Vanishing Cabinet and yet been unable to kill Dumbledore?

**Because I was afraid**

"Quid?"(Of what?)

**Everything**

Draco Malfoy had an epiphany on his bathroom floor in the stone cold arms of a vampire. He was, and had been nearly since birth the sole denizen of a hell of his own making. It would be cruel and perhaps inaccurate to say that everything that happened to him was his fault, it was true that he had done nothing to save himself from the horrors he experienced.

It was his own stupid fault that he was mute and bound by terror to his loneliness. He had allowed himself to become this way. First, as a child he had deluded himself into believing in his own popularity. He had allowed his fear of his father to rule his entire existence. And he had become bitter, spiteful and full of hate, yet lacking the courage necessary to do anything with those emotions. He could cuss and slander Potter, but he couldn't stand up to him and defend what he believed in, or more accurately, what his father told him to believe.

He'd been afraid of thinking, he could see that now. If he wasn't he would have seen the flaws in his families belief system, he would have seen his friends for the masks they wore and he would have seen himself for the bloodless, arrogant coward he was.

It was fear who had locked him up inside his mind and thrown away the key. It was fear who had cuffed him to his semen stained bed when _the fire place was right there, right fucking there and in a few whispered words he would never have to see any of them again_. It was fear who opened the vanishing cabinet, and fear who made Severus a murderer. It was fear who kept him from murdering the Death Eaters well they slept peacefully in his home.

And it was fear that ruled him now. Fear of humanity, fear of facing old demons and creating new ones.

"Neque tamen?"(Still there?)her voice was soft, and for the first time he could see the scars in her eyes, hard, brittle and plentiful.

Draco Malfoy nodded slowly and kissed her cheek. It was cool, moist and slightly spongy. Not human, but not unpleasant.

R&R?


End file.
